Description

When developing new materials for industrial applications, be it for nanoscale computer chips made of silicon or for ship hulls made of steel, it is important to achieve material properties that match the application. Whilst just making small changes to traditional materials and observing the new properties was good enough for the past millennia, modern science makes it possible to go further and acquire a deeper understanding of the underlying processes and follow a more directed approach. With today’s equipment it is possible to look at the material at magnification levels that sometimes makes it possible to identify single atoms. This lecture will introduce the atom probe technology as one of these methods and discuss its role in the development of new materials. KAUST is the first institution in the Middle East that affords this increasingly popular device.